Patti O'Shea's Blog

The Hobby Keeps Expanding

As you can see from the photo beside this text, I'm still struggling to stamp and have it look like an adult did it and not a five-year-old child. I don't know why this is so hard for me, but it totally is.

I guess maybe I just need to sit down and stamp and stamp until I can do it?

Anyway, I'm going to talk about a couple crafting companies, but they did NOT sponsor me. I paid for everything from both of them with my own money. I also bought the Tombow marker pictured, too.

My obsession with the Currently idea started when I saw the Cocoa Daisy Flutterby August Deluxe Journaling Kit, which is apparently impossible to get your hands on? I wait listed myself for it more than once and have never heard back. The Deluxe Journaling Kit had a Currently stamp with Reading, Listening, Watching, and one other event that I can't remember.

I wanted the entire Flutterby kit because I loved the butterflies so much, but most of all, I wanted that stamp. I didn't get it.

Then I heard about a Layle By Mail and that she sells an acrylic pencil board to help stampers get a crisp stamp in a journal. Since I thought this might help me with at least one of my stamping issues, I headed over there to buy it. And while I was there, I took a look around at other things. Because of course I did. :-)

And I found she had a Currently set of stamps. She actually had a Currently bundle of two stamp sets. Since the "Writing" prompt was in set 2, I bought the bundle. I really like this stamp set. It's exactly what I wanted and it's at least as cute as the one I wasn't able to buy from Cocoa Daisy. Layle By Mail also has the added benefit of more prompts. A lot more.

So I guess things worked out for the best. I got the Currently set that I wanted with a ton of more items I can track. I don't want to do twenty things, but maybe in 2026, I can pick a selection that I stamp (and update) every week. That might be an interesting way to keep track of the year.

And of course, just because I didn't get the Cocoa Daisy kit I wanted doesn't mean I didn't get anything. I am now a Creative Kit subscriber. Yeah. This latest hobby of mine is exploding.

Fizzled Out

I thought I had my weekly planning situation resolved. My idea for how to set it up seemed to be working awesomely.

Until it wasn't.

I'm still looking at the weekly page every day because that's where I keep track of the weather, my word count, and what I'm reading, so that's not the problem. I just don't seem to be doing the weekly lists of things to accomplish. This is a problem.

Some of it maybe doesn't need to be done every week. Like I have shredding on the list, but if I miss a week or two, that's not a huge deal. But the reason I did put it on my weekly items is because I don't want to end up with a huge mound of paper to run through the shredder. That was something I dealt with after my dad died and it wasn't fun.

Then there is the project side of the weekly planner. Those are things that technically don't have to be done, but it would make my life better if I actually did do some of those things. These include house projects, but I also started adding things like "notebook Cal and Io" in there, too. 

As you can see from the date on the picture above, I've used this system from now until the end of the year. Since pulling up all those stickers is a big NOPE, I'll have to keep trying for a few more months.

I've always had issues with weekly planning. It's the reason why I went to a daily planner as a last ditch effort to keep myself organized (daily works for me!), but this is still disappointing. When I flip to the current week's spread to do the weather or record my daily word count, I don't even look at the middle of the page where my projects and weekly to-do list is situated.

Like I said, I'm stuck for 2025. No pun intended. Now I need to brainstorm other ways to do a weekly plan for 2026. I started out the year in separate planners for weekly, daily, and monthly and that didn't work at all, so I can rule that out. I need a Plan D since A, B, and C have failed. 

Scathingly Brilliant Idea Fail X 2

I had a scathingly brilliant idea.

My daily list of things To Do included nine things that I do every day. It seems silly to write them and rewrite them. Especially when my planner features an entire section of habit trackers with a lot of lines. It includes the ability to track weekly or daily.

Hmm, I thought. Maybe I could list these daily items on the habit trackers and just check them off. That would be so much easier. I'd be writing things once a month instead of 28-31 times a month.

Never mind that I never use habit trackers because I forget they exist. This time it's going to work. I'm sure of it.

I got one of my small magnetic clips out to mark the page and I filled in the habit tracker with the things I need to remember to do every day. When I filled out my daily pages for the week, I left those items off the list. This was so much easier!

Until I forgot the habit trackers existed...just like I always do.

I made it about three days before I moved my daily items back to the daily pages.

There was more than my forgetting about the habit trackers at play here. The ones in my planner were big, allowing me to list a lot of items. It became hard to see what I was tracking because there were so many. And because there were so many, my ADHD brain became overwhelmed. I rarely remembered I was using them, and then when I did remember and flipped over, I was spinning. Not great.

Then I had another scathingly brilliant idea. What if I used a four-habits habit tracker? I could paste it on my weekly page. I always turn to my weekly section--it's where I record the weather. :-) This would get four things I do every day off my daily pages.

It's really amazing how a sticker can disappear on a planner page, isn't it?

After two habit tracker failures, I gave up. I'm back to writing my daily items on every daily page. It might be tedious, but at least this way I know I won't forget to do something that needs to be done. And no, I can't remember to meditate even though I do it every day. Yeah. Sigh.

Library Book Jam

I'd finished all my library books and returned them. I checked my hold list and everything seemed as if it were six or seven weeks (or more) before it would be my turn to have the ebook. This would be a great time to read book two in the series I started in May. The third book comes out this month, which means I won't forget all the details.

I also checked out another book at the same time that I thought would be interesting to read afterward. Two books. Two weeks to read. Should be fine.

And then a hold came in. Three books in two weeks? I can still do that. I checked out the book.

I get pinged that another book I'm on hold for has come in. After a brief debate, I decide that I can do it. I'll just have to find a little more time to read than usual.

Then another hold came in. I put it off for a few weeks. Same with the next hold.

In the meantime, I'm still reading the first book.

I get another notification. This is a book I'd already delayed when the hold came in earlier and I didn't have time to read it. I don't want to delay it again, but I have four books to read. I check page counts on all of them, thinking if I bang out the short ones first, I will feel less stressed.

The shortest book is the one I'm already reading. It was 352 pages. All the others were 400+ pages.

The book I delayed once has to be delayed again. I can't add another one TBR and three of the four books I have checked out cannot be extended because there's a waiting list for them.

I feel like an Air Traffic Controller trying to manage O'Hare or the Atlanta Airport. Good grief! What are the odds that all these books would come available early? I'm guessing other readers delayed taking their hold? That's the only thing that makes sense because those books were seriously a long way out when I checked.

I finished the first book last night. It was awesome, but I needed to get up early today and staying up late was not the smartest move I ever made.

Tonight, I start the book that is due next and has four people waiting. I hope it reads fast. 

Fresh Beginnings

Writing the beginning of a book always takes me so much longer than any other part. The way I explain it to people is that it's like building a house. You have to get the foundation down right or everything else you add on top of it will be out of kilter.

Wicked Temptation is no exception. 

I know this happens and I try to be patient with the process, but I'm used to the speed I was writing on the previous book. As I'm heading into the end, my speed picks up.

Going back to starting speed? It's painful.

Book 8 of the Paladin League series is Callum "Baggs" Baggnell and Iona Desmond. Baggs has been around for a few books, so I know him fairly well, and because his heroine was mentioned so much in the previous book, I know Io pretty well, too.

But then I never start writing a book until I know the characters very, very well. It doesn't mean the start of the book will go any faster.

Cal is the hero where it took forever to get his name. I don't get to pick my characters names--they let me know when we have it. There's a reason why Cal was only referred to by his handle for a while. There was a stretch where I thought his name was Callan. It just felt a little off, and after the torturous route we went through to get this name, I was frustrated. And then we got to Callum and it was an ah-ha! moment. I had a name!

Io was easier. She and her sister told me their names right away. Ayla and Iona. The only (brief) debate was whether her name was Ione or Iona. It didn't take long before that was settled.

I'm not sure I ever told the story here about their names.

The plan for the Paladin League series has changed many, many times since I first had Finn and Zo from Wicked Intention come in and talk to me. One of these later plans was an eight book series--two quartets: The Musketeers (Ryder, Finn, Griff, and Kyle) and The Lost Treasure. Only it became clear early on that this would need more books. The Lost Treasure became six books.

And I knew I had a character named Ayla hanging around. She showed up when I heard the name Isla. The two names are pronounced the same, but Ayla made it clear that her name was not spelled Isla.

I have long since given up arguing with my characters about names or spelling of said name. Whatever they want, I roll with. I used to attempt to guide them a different direction, but they always ended up with the name they wanted anyway, so why waste the time and energy?

Surnames are easier for me to get them to change. They're not as stubborn about those.

Once I realized the Paladin League Lost Treasure arc was six books and not four, it became clear that Ayla was on of the heroines. And when I learned she was a twin, I knew who the heroine in the second added book was, too.

But beginning a book is hard and takes me so long to write. I'll just keep getting the foundation down solidly, no matter how slowly it goes.

The Pressure's On

I've been doing more fiction reading this year than I have in a while. Amazing what a library card can do for a person.

The only problem is that the library only allows two-week loans and sometimes I don't have as much time to read as I'd like. Or I'd rather unwind at the end of the day by doing something else.

As an example, I returned a book today that I felt stressed about reading because it was due! I finished the book. I liked the book. But reading isn't supposed to be filled with deadline anxiety. (That's for writing.) Someone was on the wait list for the book, so I couldn't renew it. It was either finish it or get back on the wait list myself.

I have another library book on my eReader, but I have 12 days before that is due, so I can just enjoy it rather than stress read. :-)

And I can't talk about reading without discussing my book journal. I like the opening pages that I created, but the individual book pages don't look cute. I don't know how some people can just put together these outstanding spreads so easily. It must be because I didn't get the artistic gene. It makes me sad because I enjoy having a book journal.

I'm behind on filling in my thoughts on a ton of books. During the May Readathon, I was reading too fast and furiously to fill it in. Afterward, I forgot a lot of details. The biggest problem is all the Jayne Castle (JAK) Harmony books I glommed during the month. I have them all confused in my head and now I need to review them so that I can fill in the notes sections. Of course, I also read these books out of order, so I'm thinking maybe I should just reread all of them and do it right this time.

Only I have library books to get to. I've already delayed holds on multiple books, some of them more than once, because I have other books already checked out. 

Creating My Own Writing Planner: Part Two

I received no compensation of any kind for this post and everything I talk about was purchased at full price with my own money.

I didn't buy extra notes pages at the back of my Erin Condren dashboard planner and I ended up really regretting it because I ran out of space. Fast.

PlanSarahPlan on Etsy sells a blank notes page that can be put down over pages that have things on there you don't need, so I bought that and printed it out on sticker paper and laid it down over the monthly calendars I wasn't using at the front of the planner.

Because this planner is covering more than one year, I decided to put a list of Works In Progress at the front. If I'd realized how tight I was on notes pages, I would have combined this page with the next page, Future Projects. I really didn't need a full page for both of these, but the sticker paper I own is not repositionable, so two pages it is!

 

If this planner works like I hope, I'll know to 1) order an extra section of notes pages and 2) put these two sections on one page.

Every month, I want to set writing goals. There's a blank page next to the monthly notes page, so I added a sticker there.

 

I know this is something I need to figure out how to use. This is definitely a work in progress for me.

And if I'm going to set monthly goals, I should hold myself accountable, right? I need to come up with some review questions for myself.

The final page I have setup and ready to go is Blog Post Brainstorm.

Too often, I come up with ideas for the blog, and forget them because I have nowhere to write them down. Or, even better, I do write them down and then can't figure out where I wrote it. After I took the picture, I drew a line down the center to give myself more space. I'd originally planned to make this a double-page spread, but ran out of notes pages, so I used the second page for something else. There are more brainstorming pages in here for other things, but I didn't take pictures of those.

Honestly, I don't know if this is going to work or not. I'm hopeful because there's something about this layout that gives me structure, but allows me to make it what I want it to be. I hope it does work. I hope I'm excited every time I use this planner.

From next week until the end of 2025 will be all about experimenting, about finding what I need to keep track of beyond word count. I'm going to look through the abandoned author planners I bought and see if there's anything in those that I need to bring into this planner to make it work for me. I need to finish setting everything up this week. It doesn't need to be perfect, I just need to start the test run.

You know I'm going to update. :-) 

Creating My Own Writing Planner: Part One

I feel as if I should apologize in advance because I'm going to talk about planners again and this will be a two-part blog post. I've been doing a lot of thinking about planners lately. Sorry!

I received no compensation of any kind for this post and everything I talk about was purchased at full price with my own money. 

I'm going to open this with a confession: I am a planner snob. My favorite planners have always been from boutique planner companies and the mass produced ones have never seemed to work for me.

I also have never been able to use a weekly planner. My brain just doesn't work that way. While I have a weekly component to my primary 2025 planner, I don't use it the way it's supposed to be used. I have a section for weather, a section to keep track of weekly tasks and projects, and another section to track my word count. My plans are on my daily pages, which I populate one week at a time, referencing my monthly pages.

Confession two: I've tried every author planner that I've seen being sold and the way those authors setup their planners, and the things they want to keep track of, largely don't work for me. I've abandoned every single one I've purchased.

And then the YouTube algorithm showed me an Erin Condren mid-year planner unboxing (well after the video was posted) with their new dashboard layout. I was intrigued, but talked myself out of it. I've tried and failed at too many weekly planners to think my ADHD brain will manage to handle life with this weekly. And then I had what is either a scathingly brilliant idea or an incredibly stupid one. What if I used it as my writing planner?

I already knew I'd need to tweak the layout a little because it makes more sense to me to have Monday through Thursday go down the left column and Friday through Sunday go down the right, rather than going left, right, left, right as the planner was setup. Otherwise, though, it could work. I decided to give it a try.

I picked up the 18-month minimal dashboard layout planner.

I immediately began setting it up how I think it will work for me. This process has been ongoing and I'm still printing stickers and tweaking things.

  I printed out my own name sticker on my Silhouette Cameo to add to the planner. I'm not usually a swirly font person, but this one works for me. 
I printed out some Weekly Word Count stickers and some Monthly Goal and Monthly Review stickers. 
It seemed to make sense to me to set monthly goals, and the end of the month to review how I did on those goals. This is going to be challenging for me because my goals tend to be lame, like write 5000 words. It feels like they should be something with steps involved to reach the goal. I'm still thinking about this. There is a group of twelve boxes at the front of the planner. I put silver metallic washi tape down and then labeled each one with a month. I set it up for 2026 as I plan to use the rest of 2025 to experiment and see what works for me and what doesn't work for me. 
I'll finish part one with a picture of how I setup the dashboard weekly page for September. Like I said, I'm late to this party, and I'm still not finished setting things up, but I hope to start using it soon. 

I used stickers from Planner Kate to relabel the days. Like I said, it makes more sense to me to go down the left side and then down the right, rather than how Erin Condren set it up. Right now, I'm thinking I'll use the daily boxes to set my word count goals on one side of the flags, and what I actually wrote on the right side of the flags. I have no idea what I'm going to do with the notes section at the bottom. 
I'm fuzzier on what to do with this page. This planner comes with six habit trackers and I know I don't need that many. In fact, I'm horrible using any habit tracker (I should write a blog post about my latest failure!), but maybe I can manage three. I'm thinking a word count goal, a time to be ready to work, and something else. Hmm. Anyway, I used a sticker to cover up three of the habit trackers and added a "Weekly Word Count" sticker. That's where I'll put my total for the entire week. The To-Do section and the This-Week sections are also fuzzy. Yeah, I guess Priorities is fuzzy, too. Like I said, this is a work in progress. I'll adjust as I need to, but I'm hoping that having a separate writer planner will help keep me on track. Stay tuned for what I did with the notes pages in the planner. 

(Sort Of) Mid-Year Planner Review

The planner community has a period in May/June (before the academic year planners come out) where many planner people reflect on what's working for them and what isn't. It's also a time of year when you might see people moving into new planners.

In May and June, I was working on revisions and edits for my July release, and when I wasn't working on revisions, I was doing the readathon. I wasn't paying attention and I have a planner system that was mostly working for me, so I ignored the mid-year reviews going on. And then I thought, you know, it might not be a bad idea.

I'm late. It's August, but here I am with my mid-year review.

FYI, I received no compensation of any kind for this post. I purchased everything I talk about here at full price. These are my true thoughts and opinions.

My 2025 Journey Planner remains fabulous! I bought the A5 size this year and I'll probably stay in the A5 next year, although it is tempting to try the B6. That's the sweet spot for me as far as size goes, but I like all the room I have in the A5 and I'm not sure I want to lose any of it.

Lessons learned in 2025: I would not put as many stickers on the daily pages as I did. I put holidays and moons and charge the fitness tracker and all kinds of stuff like this at the top of the daily page. I also wouldn't put washi tape across the bottom of every daily page. Or the birthday and anniversary stickers. While doing this in my former planner worked well, it's not as great in a planner with Tomoe River Paper and it made it difficult to write by mid year.

Lesson one: Less stickers and washi tape

The weekly section of the planner remains a work in progress (as I said earlier) I like putting the daily weather in at the top, and I like keeping track of my word count at the bottom, but the middle section remained a testing zone. I did learn that I prefer my reading for the week to be listed in the side bar rather than across the days.

You can see in this picture that I have the currently reading spread across the days. This is the problem with setting things up in advance. I'm stuck with a spread in November that I already know I don't like that well. Actually, I'm pretty sure I'm stuck with this until the end of the year.

Lesson two: Test things out before setting up the rest of the year.

With the Journey planner, I've used the monthly pages in ways I've never used my monthlies before. Including using itty bitty icons for when my lawn service comes, when I run the dishwasher, when I do laundry, or when I have a book club Zoom.

I've never been a huge icon fan, but these really small icons I found work for me really well. I'll do this next year, too. This alleviates some of the stress on the daily pages, especially as far as stickers go. It's also easier to look at the monthly page and say, my yard hasn't been cut in eleven days, rather than paging backward through the dailies.

Lesson three: Tiny icons rock

What didn't work this year: multiple planners. I thought it would be easier to keep track of monthly and weekly tasks if I had separate planners that I kept open all the time. That was not true. I did better once I moved everything from my monthly and weekly into my Journey planner.

I also learned that while I really like having a smaller, Everyday Carry (EDC) planner, I should have gotten a monthly booklet for this rather than a full weekly planner with notes pages. I'm only using the monthly pages in this planner, and when I take it with me, I'm only recording on the monthly pages. This will save hauling around more than I need. I still don't know what I'm going to do with those notes pages when the year is over.

Lesson four: One planner beats multiple planners

2025 was about testing new planners to see which one would work for me. Prior to this year, I'd been using the same daily planner for a decade. But I strained against the format of that planner, and every year it got worse and worse for me. The biggest problem was Saturday and Sunday sharing a page, but I had other problems, too. I outgrew this planner years ago, but wasn't ready to give it up.

Because I didn't know which planner would work best for me, I tried out a number of them. I didn't want to leave the ones I decided not to use empty, so I thought multiple journals! This did not work. I don't need four journals. One was enough. I decided it was okay to not finish those planners.

I also am using one of the extra planners as a duplicate to have on the other side of the house. I really like this planner. A lot. Except the year is split into two books and that is a deal breaker for me. It's already become a chore to sync this planner with my Journey planner. My idea of using it as a writing planner didn't work. It's too much planner for what I need for writing.

Lesson five: It's okay to not use planners that don't work for you

I have two more tests I'm running for the second half of this year. One is for a planner that might work as a writing planner because it's a lot less planner than the one I mentioned above. The second involves time blocking in addition to time tracking.

I will report more on this later. This post is already too long. 

Final Day for Special Price!

Today (Monday, August 4th) is the final day to save money on Wicked Ambition!

I want to give my fans (and friends) an opportunity to save money on my books, so I always have the first two weeks (and the preorder) at a lower price. Tomorrow, the price increases, so if you haven't grabbed your copy of Oz and Ayla yet, this is the final chance to get the introductory price.

 

Ayla Desmond never takes risks, but when she senses her twin is in trouble, she boards a plane to Puerto Jardin—a country teetering on the edge of chaos. As a Public Relations specialist at the Paladin League, she’s used to spin, not bullets. But this mission plunges her into a deadly game where trust is scarce and danger is everywhere.
 
Special Forces Sgt. Oziah “Wizard” West is the king of one-night stands, but he hasn’t been able to forget the last woman he hooked up with, a mysterious blonde who slipped away from his hotel room. When he spots her in Puerto Jardin, he knows there’ll be trouble. Oz rushes to her side, determined to keep her safe.
 
Ayla wants nothing to do with Oz. He’s a mistake she’d rather forget, but circumstances force them together. Surrounded by mercenaries and stalked by an arms dealer who believes she holds the key to a hidden treasure, she has no choice but to rely on the enigmatic stranger who ignited her passion. As danger escalates, so do their feelings, and then a positive pregnancy test changes everything.
 
Now, Oz risks not only his heart but also his life to protect Ayla and their unborn child. Can they survive the treacherous game they’re caught in, or will their love become the ultimate casualty?

Wicked Ambition is a stand-alone romance with a HEA. There are references to events that happened in earlier books, but it's not necessary to read them to enjoy this story.

 

Indulge in a protective Special Forces hero and a heroine who is a fish-out-of-water, but will do whatever it takes to save her sister. This romantic suspense story features a one-night stand, an unexpected pregnancy, and a second chance romance.